Helena Nelson is a poet, critic, editor and publisher (HappenStance Press). Her first collection was Starlight on Water (Rialto 2003). This was followed by Plot and Counter-Plot (Shoestring, 2010), and a light verse collection Down With Poetry! (HappenStance, 2016). Another light verse pamphlet (Branded) is due out from Red Squirrel later this year.

SHORE POET: Martainn Macan t-Saoir | Martin MacIntyre

Màrtainn Mac an t-Saoir (Martin Macintyre) and his family live in Edinburgh. He has been a Shore Poet since 2010. He works as a medical doctor and a writer and is involved in a number of Gaelic initiatives in the city. He was brought up in Lenzie near Glasgow, his father being originally from South Uist.

He is an author, bard and storyteller and has worked across these genres for many years. His early poetry was published in Let Me Dance With Your Shadow in 2006, and in 2007 he was crowned ‘Bard’ by An Comunn Gàidhealach. He has been interested in Gaelic songs and singing for many years and has competed at various National Mods and reached the final on a number of occasions including 2017.

Besides his poetry and two novels he has written two collections of short stories: the first in 2003, Ath-Aithne (Re-acquaintance) – recently translated into French – won The Saltire Society First Book Award; while his latest collection, Cala Bendita ’s a Bheannachdan (Cala Bendita and its Blessings), was shortlisted for both The Donald Meek Award and The Saltire Literary Book of The Year in 2014.

NEW POET: Roseanne Watt

Roseanne Watt is a poet, filmmaker and musician from Shetland. She was the winner of the 2018 Edwin Morgan Poetry Award, and runner-up in the 2018 Aesthetica Creative Writing Award. Her first collection, Moder Dy, will be published by Polygon in May 2019

MUSICIAN: Andy Shanks

Andy Shanks is an award-winning singer-songwriter from the North East of Scotland. He is best known for his work with Jim Russell on their critically acclaimed album ‘Diamonds in the Night’ and for his songs which have been recorded by many artists, most notably June Tabor.

His solo set is a journey though stories and characters he has met on the way, often moving from traditional to jazz and country depending on the tale. Lyrically, his songs conjure up close observations of the characters and landscapes of Fife and Aberdeenshire, often taking a swipe at contemporary Scots culture. Andy has toured extensively in Scotland and as far afield as North America, recording and performing with many fine musicians. He most recently worked with Christine Kydd on her new album ‘Shift and Change’.

He is also a passionate advocate for Scottish writing and culture, most recently appearing in the BBC documentary ‘The Promised Land’ championing MacDiarmid’s ‘A Drunk Man Looks at a Thistle’ and its place in Scotland’s cultural revolution.

The lemon cake raffle provides us with much-needed funds, so we very much appreciate your support. And it is a most excellent lemon cake. We may also have some excellent poetry books to raffle. If you’re lucky, you may get to choose – what will it be? Cake, or poetry?

We will have a wildcard spot this month. Please mention to the person selling tickets that you’d like to put your name in the hat. Bring a poem to read in case you’re chosen! You’ll have three minutes (this includes any preamble or introduction – it’s a good idea to time yourself in advance to make sure you’re within the time limits).

Happy New Year! The first Shore Poets event 2019 season is almost upon us and we’d love you to join us! Please come along and help us celebrate our first selection of poets for this year. We’re delighted to welcome back honorary Shore Poet and much-loved Edinburgh poet Diana Hendry. She’ll be reading alongside her partner; the poet, publisher and current Shore Poet, Hamish Whyte. If you haven’t heard them read together before, you’re in for a treat. They’ll be joined by Rex Sweeny who is this month’s new poet and our musicians – the talented trio, Tribaiser.

Diana has published six collections of poems, including Making Blue, Borderers and Late Love & Other Whodunnits (all Peterloo Poets) and The Seed-Box Lantern: New and Selected Poems (Mariscat). Her most recent collection is The Watching Stair (Worple Press, 2018). In 2015 she collaborated with Douglas Dunn and Vicki Feaver in Second Wind (Saltire Society/Scottish Poetry Library): poems on ageing.

She has also written over 40 children’s books, including the Whitbread-winning Harvey Angell and recently The Seeing which was shortlisted both for the Costa Prize and Scottish Book of the Year. A junior novel, Out of the Clouds, came out from Hodder in 2016, with a sequel, Whoever You Are,in 2018. Her short stories have been widely published and broadcast.

She was the first writer in residence at Dumfries and Galloway Royal Infirmary and from 2008 to 2010 she was a Royal Literary Fund Fellow at the University of Edinburgh. She has recently co-edited New Writing Scotland.

Janice Galloway has commented: ‘Diana Hendry’s poetry has a wonderful sense of the author’s voice, dark and bitterly sweet at the same time, like high-grade chocolate.’

Hamish has had three collections of poems published by Shoestring Press, A Bird in the Hand, The Unswung Axe and Things We Never Knew (the last published 2016). A pamphlet Now the Robin came out from HappenStance Press in 2018.

He has also edited many anthologies of Scottish literature, including Mungo’s Tongues: Glasgow Poems 163-1990, An Arran Anthology, Kin: Scottish Family Poems, Scottish Cats (Birlinn 2013) and most recently Ten Poems About Robins (Candlestick Press, 2018).

He runs Mariscat Press, publishing the poetry of Edwin Morgan, Stewart Conn, Douglas Dunn, Jackie Kay, Gael Turnbull, Christine De Luca, Diana Hendry and Jim Carruth among others. In 2015 Mariscat won both the Callum Macdonald Memorial Award and the Michael Marks Award for poetry pamphlet publishing. He is an Honorary Research Fellow in Scottish Literature at the University of Glasgow, a member of Edinburgh’s Shore Poets and plays percussion with the band The Whole Shebang.

His long poem Window on the Garden was reviewed in Scotland on Sunday as ‘impossible to describe, like Joni Mitchell and James Joyce deciding to rewrite Thomson’s The Seasons in the style of Sappho.’

Originally from Sussex, Rex Sweeny spent twelve years in Oxford before moving to Scotland and has lived in Edinburgh since 1989. He organises and hosts the annual CultFusion poetry event for Leith Festival and his work has appeared in The One O’Clock Gun, Torn Pages and the 2013 anthology New T@les From The Old Town.

MUSICIANS: TRIBAISER

A group of three Heriot-Watt musicians, and more so very good friends, comprising of Fraser Sharp, Kyle Kinnear and Jack Lodge playing drums, jazz keys and trombone respectively. The trio is set to enjoy its second consecutive year playing at the event following a year of musical road trips and music courses around the West and North coasts of Scotland!

AND THE LEMON CAKE RAFFLE

The lemon cake raffle provides us with much-needed funds, and of course provides one lucky winner with a very excellent lemon cake. Sometimes we have poetry pamphlets in the raffle too.

Useful information:

If you would like to be notified of our monthly events, please follow this blog, by clicking the follow button in the corner. You can also follow us on Facebook and Twitter.

We’re back at the Outhouse bar this month, on Sunday 28th, for a vibrant and varied evening of poetry and music. We’re delighted to welcome Tom Pow as our headline poet. Alongside Christine de Luca and Tammy Adams, we’re in for an entertaining and lively evening. But don’t forget that the clocks go back this weekend!

Our Open Night will be on November 25th, when much of the evening is handed over to up-and-coming poets.

The signup period is now open. Please throw your name in the hat for two, 3-minute readings by email only to shorepoetsedinburgh @ gmail.com by the end of the day on Saturday 10th November. We’re looking for ten poets and will select on a first-come-first-served basis.

MAIN POET: TOM POW

Tom Pow has written across a range of genres, including fiction, non-fiction, drama and works for children. But he is primarily a poet. His work explores the domestic, but it also travels to other places and other periods. Dear Alice, Narratives of Madness concerns the legacy of a nineteenth century lunatic asylum, while A Wild Adventure is a speculative poetic biography of Thomas Watling, a Dumfries forger transported to Botany Bay. In The Becoming, New and Selected Poems, was published in 2009 and Recolectores de Nueces, a bi-lingual selection of poems, translated by Jorge Fondebrider, was published in Mexico in 2016. He can be heard at The Poetry Archive. His most recent publication is Barefoot: the collected poems of Alastair Reid of which he was editor.

Credit: Sophie Kandaouroff

SHORE POET: CHRISTINE DE LUCA

Christine De Luca lives in Edinburgh. She writes in English and Shetlandic, her mother tongue. She was appointed Edinburgh’s Makar for 2014-2017. Besides several children’s stories and one novel, she has had seven poetry collections and four bi-lingual volumes published (French, Italian, Icelandic and Norwegian). She’s participated in many festivals here and abroad. Her poems have been selected four times for the Best Scottish Poems of the Year (2006, 2010, 2013 and 2015) for the Scottish Poetry Library online anthologies and her pamphlet collection Dat Trickster Sun was short-listed for the Michael Marks pamphlet prize. Paolozzi at Large in Edinburgh, co-edited with Carlo Pirozzi, is being launched at Blackwell’s on Thursday 31st – it includes new poems in English.

NEW POET: TAMMY ADAMS

Tammy lives in Dunbar and is a member of Tyne and Esk writers. She started writing poetry in 2014 and has seen poems published in The Interpreter’s House and on Lighten Up Online. She has also provided poems to no-poetry magazines The Scottish Planner and Full Potential, the magazine produced by Downs Syndrome Scotland. She was longlisted in this year’s Plough Poetry Prize and has previously been a top 10 finalist in a Poems on a Beermat competition. Some of her poems are inspired by her work as a town planner. Other spring from random thoughts or events. She loves writing poetry as a way to shoo words and worries out of her brain, and to bring a smile to people’s faces.

MUSICIAN: DAVID HEAVENOR

David Heavenor is a Scottish singer songwriter based in Edinburgh. He has produced six albums plus two EPs and can often be heard on BBC Radio Scotland’s Iain Anderson programme. ‘I’m Watching Rosanna’ was described as ‘an insightful song…. beautifully written and observed’ by Iain Anderson on BBC Radio. Ricky Ross, of Deacon Blue, named ‘Jenny & the Cold Caller’ as ‘one of the best songs ever written…’

WILDCARD SPOT AND THE LEMON CAKE RAFFLE

We will have a wildcard spot this month. Please mention to the person selling tickets that you’d like to put your name in the hat (ideally we will ask you, but sometimes we forget to ask and then we feel sad once we remember our omission). Bring a poem to read in case you’re chosen! You’ll have three minutes (this includes any preamble or introduction – it’s a good idea to time yourself in advance to make sure you’re within the time limits).

The lemon cake raffle provides us with much-needed funds, so we very much appreciate your support. And it is a most excellent lemon cake. (Occasionally, we also have poetry books in the raffle, and are very grateful to the donors thereof.)

Useful information:

If you would like to be notified of our monthly events, please follow this blog, by clicking the follow button in the corner. You can also follow us on Facebook and Twitter.

For our May readings, we’re delighted to welcome two brilliant Edinburgh-based poets to Shore Poets – Alan Gillis and Sarah Stewart. They’ll be joined by Rob MacKillop, performing a world premier of The Manfred Suite by guitarist-composer, Gordon Ferries. Please join us on the last Sunday of the month for a great line up. If you’d like to read a poem alongside our trio of wonderful poets, please bring a poem with you and put your name in the hat at the door – we’ll pick a ‘wildcard’ poet to open the evening.

Sunday 27th May 2018 7pm (doors open 6.30pm)

Oh! Outhouse, 12a Broughton Street Lane, Edinburgh, EH1 3LY

Admission: £5 (concessions £3)

Please be there in plenty of time to get a seat. Unfortunately, fire regulations mean we have to turn people away if the room becomes overcrowded.

MAIN POET: ALAN GILLIS

Alan Gillis is from Belfast and now lives in Scotland, where he teaches English at The University of Edinburgh. He has published four poetry collections with The Gallery Press: Scapegoat (2014), Here Comes the Night (2010), Hawks and Doves (2007) and Somebody, Somewhere (2004), which won the Strong Award for Best First Collection in Ireland. He has also been shortlisted for the T. S. Eliot prize, and for the Irish Times Poetry Now Award. In 2014 he was selected as a ‘Next Generation Poet’ by the Poetry Book Society in the UK. As a critic he is author of Irish Poetry of the 1930s (2005), and co-editor of the Oxford Handbook of Modern Irish Poetry (2012), both published by Oxford University Press. From 2010-2015 he was editor of Edinburgh Review. A Selected Poems entitled Scapegoat and Other Poems was published in the USA by Wake Forest Press in 2016.

SHORE POET: FRANK GLYNN

Frank has been writing poetry and prose for many years, with several novels in his drawer. He plays violin and viola in several ensembles around Edinburgh, in The Whole Shebang, in Holm, and in the St Andrew Orchestra. He is the music facilitator for Shore Poets.

NEW POET: SARAH STEWART

Sarah Stewart is a writer and editor based in Edinburgh. She was a UNESCO City of Literature Writer in Residence in Krakow in 2017, and her poetry has appeared in Anon, Gutter, The Honest Ulsterman, Mslexia, New Writing Dundee, The Pickle Jar, The Scotsman, and in the anthologies Be The First To Like This: New Scottish Poetry and Best Scottish Poems 2014. Her first pamphlet, Glisk, was published by Tapsalteerie this month.

MUSICIAN: ROB MACKILLOP

Rob MacKillop is guitar player with a wealth of experience in different styles and periods, from medieval Scottish music on lute, through to free improvisation on acoustic archtop guitar. For his visit to the Shore Poets he will be showcasing a new guitar (if it arrives from the luthier in time!), and will include a new improvisation based on the poetry readings he hears at the meeting. Rob will be playing a world premier of a specially commissioned piece by guitarist-composer, Gordon Ferries. It is a five-minute piece for classical guitar, based on the Byron play, Manfred.

WILDCARD SPOT AND THE LEMON CAKE RAFFLE
The lemon cake raffle provides us with much-needed funds, so we very much appreciate your support. And it is a most excellent lemon cake. (Occasionally, we also have poetry books in the raffle, and are very grateful to the donors thereof.)

We should have a wildcard spot this month. Please mention to the person selling tickets that you’d like to put your name in the hat (ideally we will ask you, but sometimes we forget to ask and then we feel sad once we remember our omission). Bring a poem to read in case you’re chosen! You’ll have three minutes (this includes any preamble or introduction – it’s a good idea to time yourself in advance to make sure you’re within the time limits).

See you on 27th May!

Useful information:
1) we have a mailing list, and if you haven’t signed up yet, here’s your chance: just click right here and fill in the few bits of information. This is usually only for event notifications and things like ‘looking for slam/open night participants’. You can unsubscribe anytime you want to, although we would be sad if you did.
2) Our email address (take out spaces on either side of the @) is shorepoetsedinburgh @ gmail.com. Emails sent to any other email address go to the great rubbish bin in the virtual sky.

Headline poet: James Robertson
New poet: Annie Pia
Shore Poet: Christine De Luca
Live music by Andy Miller
Special reading by Kathleen Jamie as the Mark Ogle Memorial Award poet
and, as always, the lemon cake raffle

HEADLINE POET: JAMES ROBERTSON

James Robertson is a poet and novelist, as well as a publisher. He’s been awarded the Saltire Scottish Book of the Year award twice, and has been writer in residence at the Scottish Parliament. Like any good poet (and he is definitely a good poet), he has a page on the website of the Scottish Poetry Library.

NEW POET: ANNIE PIA

Based in Edinburgh, Annie has been published in Northwords Now, Poetry Scotland, New Voices Press and London’s South Bank Poetry Magazine, and her work has appeared online in Far Off Places, poetandgeek and Ink Sweat & Tears. Her poem “Viticuso 1913 and 2005” has been translated into Italian.

SHORE POET: CHRISTINE DE LUCA

Christine De Luca, who writes in both English and Shetlandic, is a native Shetlander who has lived in Edinburgh since student days. She enjoys her dual identity and was recently appointed Edinburgh’s Makar or poet laureate (until 2017).

MUSICIAN: ANDY MILLER

Andy Miller is a multi instrumentalist based in Edinburgh. His musical interests range from Old Time American fiddle music and Bluegrass through to Arabic maqam. Andy mainly concentrates on his teaching practice just now and more information can be found at his website.

Of course, you’ll have a chance to support Shore Poets and win the amazing lemon cake by participating in our raffle. Often, the raffle includes other prizes donated by our readers or Shore Poets. So even if you don’t win the lemon cake, you could walk away with a prize. Unfortunately, there won’t be a wildcard poet this month as we have the Mark Ogle poet, but dinna fret – that will return next month.

Described as “a beat poet of the upper latitudes”, Jen Hadfield is the author of three collections. Her second, Nigh-No-Place (Bloodaxe, 2008), won the TS Eliot Prize and was shortlisted for the Forward Prize. She was recently named the 2014 Dr Gavin Wallace Fellow. For more information, you can check out her blog.

BETTER THAN NEEPS: NIALL CAMPBELL

Niall Campbell is originally from the Western Isles of Scotland. His first collection, Moontide (Bloodaxe, 2014), won the Saltire First Book of the Year Award in 2014. It was also shortlisted for the Aldeburgh and Forward Prizes for Best First Collection. Last year he was named inaugural winner of the Edwin Morgan Poetry Award. You can also read his blog.

Sileagh MacWhirter and Jim Bowers deliver spine tingling vocals and outstanding guitar arrangements of original acoustic songs and favourites from artists such as John Martyn, Bert Jansch and Carole King.

Of course, you’ll have a chance to support Shore Poets and win the amazing lemon cake by participating in our raffle. Often, the raffle includes other prizes donated by our readers or Shore Poets. So even if you don’t win the lemon cake, you could walk away with a prize!

Brian Johnstone has published six collections, most recently Dry Stone Work (Arc Publications 2014). His poems have been translated into over ten languages; in 2009, Terra Incognita, a chapbook in Italian translation, was published by L’Officina (Vicenza). A founder and former Director of StAnza: Scotland’s International Poetry Festival, he has appeared at numerous international poetry festivals, from Macedonia to Nicaragua, and venues across the UK. (In fact, as of the time this blog entry was being written, Brian was appearing at a festival in Canada!) He will be reading from his most recent book, as well as a few favourites from previous publications, with his poems ranging over subjects from travels in Greece to Scottish history, from life in the circus to cartoon characters, from 40s jazz stars to 60s pop groups.

Ken Cockburn was born in Kirkcaldy. He studied French and German at Aberdeen University, and Theatre Studies at University College Cardiff. From 1996 to 2004 he worked at the Scottish Poetry Library, as Fieldworker and Assistant Director. With Alec Finlay he established and ran pocketbooks, an award-winning series of books of poetry and visual art (1999-2002), and was subsequently a director of platform projects, its successor company. Since 2004 he has worked as a freelance writer, translator, editor and writing tutor. His first collection of poems, Souvenirs and Homelands, was shortlisted for a Saltire Award in 1998, and a collection of his translations of contemporary German poets, Feathers and Lime, was published in 2007, as was a new collection of poems, On the flyleaf. His poems have been published in translation in French, German, Hungarian and Slovakian.

Both Brian and Ken have pages on the Scottish Poetry Library website, where you can find more information and links to their poems.

Our new poet is Lindsay Macgregor.

Lindsay is co-founder and co-host of Platform poetry and music nights at Ladybank Station in Fife. She writes online poetry reviews for Dundee University Review of the Arts and co-edits Dundee Writes, a small magazine of prose and poetry by students and staff from across the University of Dundee. Her poems have been published in Northwords Now, Gutter, New Writing Scotland, Poetry Scotland, Ink, Sweat and Tears and New Writing Dundee. She is currently working on a text and image collaboration with Sutherland artist Merran Gunn.

Our Shore Poet is Angela McSeveney.

Angela’s first collection of poems, Coming Out With It, was published in 1992, after she received advice and encouragement from fellow writers Liz Lochhead and Ron Butlin. She has since published three pamphlets, the most recent of which, Still Bristling, was published by Mariscat Press in 2012.

Our live musicians are traditional musicians Ros, Roy & Corinne.

And who will be our wildcard poet? Maybe you! Just bring a poem you’d like to perform, put your name in the hat when you arrive at the door, and wait breathlessly to see if your name is picked!

Of course, you’ll have a chance to support Shore Poets and win the amazing lemon cake by participating in our raffle. Often, the raffle includes other prizes donated by our readers or Shore Poets. So even if you don’t win the lemon cake, you could walk away with a prize!

Welcome back to another season of Shore Poets, everyone! We’re glad to have survived the festivals, and by the time this event rolls around, we’ll have survived the Referendum. (Unless we don’t, in which case we would like to take this opportunity to thank you for your support.)

“Poet, songwriter, film maker, critic, editor, teacher and translator, Donny O’Rourke was born, brought up and educated in Renfrewshire and has degrees from the University of Glasgow and from Cambridge. Many fellowships and awards have come his way including the Hermann Kesten Stipendium which took him as Glasgow’s representative to its twin city, Nürnberg, in May 2004. After several years (and very senior positions) in television and journalism, Donny went freelance. He still broadcasts regularly and is the author or editor of more than a dozen books, CDs and works for the theatre including translations, mostly from French. He edited the landmark anthology Dream State: the New Scottish Poets, published in 1994 and updated in 2001.”

Richie recently published his debut collection, Cairn, with Nine Arches Press. He also has two pamphlets, Spinning Plates (HappenStance, 2012), and Ballast Flint (Cromarty Arts Trust, 2013), the latter of which was written in collaboration with artist Hannah Rye. He’s won an Edwin Morgan Travel Bursary and has been a Hawthornden Fellow, and was shortlisted for the 2013 Melita Hume Poetry Prize.

An acclaimed author, bàrd and storyteller, Martin has been working across these genres for a number of years now. His early poetry was published in Let Me Dance With Your Shadow in 2006, and in 2007, at The Lochaber National Mòd, Martin was crowned ‘Bard’ by An Comunn Gàidhealach. In April 2014, he was a panellist in the Commonwealth Writers Conversation “The Untold Story: By Our Own Tongues” as part of the Aye Write festival.

He has published two books of aphorism, The Book of Shadows (Picador, 2004) and The Blind Eye (Faber, 2007), and a compendium, Best Thought, Worst Thought (Graywolf, 2008). He has also edited a number of anthologies.

His poetry has won a number of awards, including the Forward Prize for Best First Collection, the Whitbread Poetry Prize, the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Award, and the T S Eliot Prize on two occasions. Most recently, Rain won the 2009 Forward prize. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and a Fellow of the English Association; he received the OBE in 2008 and the Queen’s Gold Medal for Poetry in 2010.

Don has been the poetry editor for Picador since 1996, and is also a musician. We’re greatly looking forward to hearing him read, and advise everyone to come along early to this event, as we’re expecting a high turnout!

Our Shore Poets wildcard slot is also up for grabs! In case you’re unfamiliar with the concept, you basically just need to turn up, clutching one poem (and one poem only), and put your name into our ‘poet hat’ when you pay at the door. One name will be pulled from the hat at the start of the night, and that person will kick off the night for us by reading their poem. We hope you’ll be brave enough to have a go!

Of course, we’ll also have live music on the night — this month, we’re delighted to welcome Tom Fairnie. Tom is an Edinburgh based singer/songwriter with a rich background of performance and recorded collaborations with other poets and musicians. You can read more about him at his website.

And last but not least, you’ll also be able to buy tickets for our infamous lemon cake raffle.